


By Halves

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 20:56:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: For this prompt from thorduna: “... the gentlest, most worshipful BDSM with Thor subbing and bottoming. Loki goes over him with a fine tooth comb and just makes him feel godly. So much rimming and body fluids involved…”





	By Halves

 

 

Loki and Strange conned Thanos out of the stones in less than a week. People who think themselves clever and believe that they deserve the best make excellent marks. The sorcerers convinced Thanos that there were nine gems rather than six. One stone for each of the realms Odin had conquered. It was easy to believe that Odin had chosen those worlds out of all the others because they contained the stones. Equally easy to believe that Odin could have lost the gems, given that his own realm had fallen. Loki and Strange told Thanos it would take the strength of the stones he already possessed to acquire the absent ones. One by one he handed them over until the two magicians had assembled all the jewels. After they sent Thanos packing, Loki tried to con Strange out of the gems. He had his reputation to uphold, after all. But, as he knew it would never actually work, he didn’t try very hard. Failure had begun to taste a bit stale. 

 

Uncertain of the outcome of the reunion of the gems, Strange configured a room in an isolated dimension in which to remove them from their housings and set them together.

“You,” Strange said, narrowing his eyes at Loki and twisting his mouth in unconcealed reluctance, “should probably be there for this. It isn’t in any of my books.”

 

Unbound, the gems floated to the center of the room, formed a circle, and spun in an orbital plane. They drew closer and closer together, attracted by their own gravity, compressing and growing denser, collapsing in on themselves, and humming all the while like the ringing of a gong. The note increased in pitch and volume until every molecule in Strange and Loki’s bodies was vibrating with it. When they thought their eardrums would burst, everything abruptly went silent. The stones went dark and stopped spinning. A tiny ring hung in the air with a blue globe of light at its center. It reminded Loki of his brother’s eyes.  _ Eye _ , he corrected, then second-guessed himself, for in his memories there were, overwhelmingly, two eyes in his brother’s head, and without Thor here, he existed to Loki only in memory.

“What did you do?” Loki and Strange asked in unison, then glared at each other and approached the ring.

Strange got there first. The ring’s surface grew bright at the touch of his hand, flickering with prismatic tints the way the Bifrost did. The blue sphere within it glowed around his finger when he slipped it inside. When he went to pull the ring down from the air, it didn’t move.

“Let go of it.” 

“I’m not holding it,” Loki said.

Strange tried elbow grease and every spell he could think of, but the ring remained in place, suspended at eye level, looking like a tiny replica of Neptune.

“You try,” he panted. 

When Loki slipped his finger into the ring, it wouldn’t budge for him either. He dangled from it and thrashed wildly. Cast spells. Threw his leg up into the air and kicked it. It was all too familiar.

“You’re shitting me,” he breathed.

“What?” Strange asked.

“Not you,” Loki said, waving him off. He smoothed his hair away from his face with both hands and straightened his sleeves, then let his head fall back as he sighed. “The Captain or my brother. And if not them, then probably no one at the moment… apart from Heimdall, but he’s had more than enough on his plate too often already.”

“No offense, but I’m a little more impressed with Earth’s candidate,” Strange said, then opened a portal onto an unsuspecting Steven Rogers and politely invited him to step through.

“You’re not the first to make that mistake,” Loki smiled. “But you might be the last.”

“Was that a threat?” Strange asked.

“An observation.”

“Captain, would you mind putting on that ring?” Strange asked.

Rogers looked back and forth between his companions, poked each of them on the shoulder to see if they were real, grimaced, and slipped his finger through the loop. The blue globe of light at its center vanished and the ring moved with his hand. The captain’s first and only action was to pull the thing off his finger and fling it to the floor. It didn’t bounce when it hit the ground, but stuck in place where it landed as if held by a magnet.

“What the hell was that?” Rogers snapped, wide-eyed and with nostrils flared, gasping as if he’d sprinted miles in the three seconds the gems had been on his finger.

“You tell us,” Loki replied, before Strange could make an answer.

“I was hallucinating.”

“Hallucinating what?” Loki asked.

“Everything. Nothing. I don’t know,” Rogers shook his head.

“Thank you for your help,” Loki said, softening his voice and face into forms that were meant to be soothing. “Work in progress. Sorry to waste your time.”

Strange sent Rogers home again and looked to Loki the moment the portal had closed.

“What did he see?”

“Exactly what he told us, I expect: everything and nothing. The before, the during, and the after. The beginning, the middle, and the end.” 

“Shit,” Strange said flatly, then raised his eyebrows in surprise at the words that were about to leave his lips. “Let’s try your man, shall we?”

“God,” Loki corrected, and couldn’t help smirking. “As I suspect you’re about to find out.”

“I thought  _ you _ were a god,” Strange remembered, drawing his arms in arcs to open a doorway.

“It’s,” Loki began, “more of an honorary title. Like Elvis was the King. I’m a frost giant.”

“You don’t look like a gia-”

“ _ Yes _ , I’m aware of that, thank you. My father didn’t think so either, so he left me out on the ice to die after I was born.”

“Thor,” Strange greeted brightly, slightly manic, glad for the company and the change of subject.

Loki turned his attention to his brother, who was facing the portal Strange had made as if he’d been waiting for it to appear. He walked straight past the sorcerers with long strides, then stopped in front of the ring that was standing upright on its edge in the center of the room. Loki stared at Thor’s narrowed eye and at the faint curve of his mouth. A cautious smile, like reined-in hope. 

“Mind trying it on?” Strange asked, looking to Loki for some indication of what was going on with his brother and receiving only a mock-innocent shrug below a bitten back grin and green eyes that were too wide and too bright to be remotely reassuring.

Thor dropped to a crouch and picked up the tiny band. The blue sphere of light within the ring extinguished as it had done for Rogers when Thor slipped it on, but the jewelry remained on the third finger of Thor’s right hand. He twisted it almost absentmindedly as he slowly rose to his feet. Loki couldn’t suppress a faint huff and a roll of his eyes.  _ Of course the damned thing answered to him. _

“Thor,” Loki coaxed softly.

“I could hear her singing again,” Thor murmured. 

“Mjolnir,” Loki guessed, and Thor nodded. “And what do you see?”

“Everything. Nothing. All the yesterdays and tomorrows. Now.”

Loki smiled, primarily at Strange, pleased at having been right.

“And you’re okay with that?” Strange asked, scrunching up his face in disbelief. 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Thor asked, not offended or defensive, genuinely curious.

“Isn’t it a lot to take in?” Strange tried.

“Oh. I suppose. But it’s not too different from sitting on the throne,” Thor shrugged. “And I can set it aside a bit, here,” Thor explained, gently brushing his finger over the the empty socket of his eye. 

Strange stared at the scorched hole. A seemingly-terrible godsend that hid a silver lining.

“It’s so good to hear her voice,” Thor smiled. He dipped his head once in thanks and turned to open a portal of his own with a quick, casual motion of his hand, already more confident than even Loki was ready for. The doorway closed silently behind him and left the two wizards alone.

“So,” Strange said. “That went… almost  _ too _ well.”

“Our mother was a witch,” Loki offered, with a lazy flourish of his fingers.

“So Thor is only half a god.”

“Goddesses can be witches.”

“I see. But he’s the god of  _ thunder _ ,” Strange said. 

Loki’s smile at this statement was unsettling.

“Yes, and therefore the god of lightning. God of electrons. Energy. Molecules. Matter. You see where I’m going with this.”

“A god of anything.”

“A nature god,” Loki corrected. “And, last time I checked, nature was everywhere.”

“Right,” Strange murmured, sounding a little lost.

“Don’t feel too bad, doctor. I’ve had a thousand years and I only connected those dots ten minutes ago.” 

“Thunderheads are shaped like anvils,” Strange remembered. “Is that why Thor carried a hammer?”

“Yes, our father gave it to him. He was the god of poetry, among a thousand other equally absurd things. He liked little touches like that.”

“And what was your mother the goddess of?”

“Foreknowledge, wisdom, protection, and healing,” Loki replied, smiling helplessly now and feeling his face grow warm and his eyes go shiny.

Strange blinked rapidly and took a slow breath as it all sank in.

“Right. So... he’s his mother’s son.”

“And growing more like her by the minute,” Loki beamed. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to keep an eye on him while he’s finding his feet.”

“Did we just give him absolute power?”

“We did,” Loki chirped, grinning with all of his teeth.

Strange’s face drained of color and he went very still.

“I know you think he’s an oaf. I’ve often made the same mistake myself. So trust the stones,” Loki said. “Your curiosity would kill the cat--as would my appetite. We can’t wield the ring. Rogers is still too young, too unfamiliar with magic. But Thor thought nothing of it. It was familiar. Don’t you find that reassuring?”

“It’ll have to do,” Strange said, still sounding doubtful. “The hammer  _ sang _ to him?” Strange asked, wrinkling his nose at the oddness of it, looking on as Loki opened a portal.

“So he says. I confess I could never hear it. Only the ringing when he called her or hit something with her.” 

“ _ Her _ ?” Strange said.

“Of course  _ her _ ,” Loki replied. “The heart of a dying star.”

“So... stars are feminine?” 

“What else would they be?” Loki boggled, then doubled over laughing as he stumbled through his portal.

  
  


“Thor? Are you all right?” Loki called, climbing the three steps up to the low wooden platform and pulling aside the flap as he entered Thor’s home. 

Asgard had relocated to the cliffs facing the sea in Norway. After investigating Midgardian architecture, they had opted to live in yurts. Stark, after dealing with a great deal of Norwegian paperwork, built them. There were so few of the structures it tightened Thor’s throat every time he looked out across the field and saw them. 

“I can always take the ring off,” Thor replied, rising from the floor in front of the wood burning-stove where he’d been staring into the flames as he warmed his toes. “I love what the wind here does to your hair,” Thor said, laughing gently and reaching to rearrange the curls that had been twisted and tossed up over the top of Loki’s head. 

“Still,” Loki said, pausing a moment to collect his thoughts, distracted by the smile on Thor’s lips and the words that had passed through them and the fingers that were still fixing his hair, tucking it behind his left ear, threading through it at the temple and combing it back, “you’ve been saddled with everything you never wanted. The role of King. Ragnarok. And now the stones. It’s a lot, even for you.”

“Could be worse, all things considered,” Thor shrugged.

“Shh. Don’t bait the Norns, brother,” Loki whispered.

Thor hummed and rubbed his thumb behind the bend of Loki’s jaw while he curled his fingertips around the back of Loki’s neck.

“What have you been laughing about?” Thor asked.

“What gave me away?”

“Your eyes are wet at the edges and your voice is high and bright.”

“Strange didn’t know the stars are feminine.”

Thor snorted at this. His eye shut with his smile as he shook his head in amused disapproval that lacked an ounce of surprise.

“That man is such an insufferable ass,” Thor said, but Loki heard affection in it.

“I like him too.”

“I thought you might,” Thor said, squeezing Loki’s neck gently before letting it go and fetching them something to drink.

 

They sat at Thor’s small dining table, sipping mead and looking one another over, each of them at a distance, lost in their own thoughts, so that even when their gazes met, there was no conversation in it. No exchange. Only assessment. 

 

The sun sank low. Little light came in through the opening in the tent’s roof above the stove. Clouds obscured the pinks and oranges of sunset so that only a grey column of haze filtered down the center of the room. The faint red glow of the fire was all that illuminated the edges of the space. Loki cast lamps around the yurt with a slow circuit of his arm. The sudden brightness made the darkness of Thor’s eye socket more jarring. It felt like a trick. As if Thor had smeared ash there or learned to cast a glamour to frighten Loki into thinking he’d been injured. Only Thor wasn’t the sort. That was something Loki would do. Had done. Repeatedly. Thor was simply, awfully injured.

“I’d bring her back again just to kill her for taking your eye,” Loki said.

“I thought you said it suited me.”

“It suits your role. Sets you apart. You look fierce. A warrior tried and proven. And when we think of our king, we think of a stubborn little god with one eye.” 

Thor smiled at this. At  _ we _ and  _ our _ . At Loki including himself and claiming him. 

“Only you didn’t want that role,” Loki went on. “And...” 

“ _ And _ ?”

“And you have a literal blind spot now.”

“Not really,” Thor winked, and waved the fourth finger of his right hand. Loki gave a tight smile.

“I’ve lost nearly everything now,” Loki admitted, voice just above a whisper. Thor gave him a faint nod and a patient, unblinking eye as he waited for the rest. “You and that face of yours are all I have left... and pieces of you are being picked away...  _ gods _ , how I loved your eyes.”

“Well, I have half my eyes,” Thor teased gently. “And my face and I are still here for the moment.”

“For the moment,” Loki mouthed, staring down into his drink with his features slack and his lips parted.

Thor watched his brother gather himself. Saw the lips sealing and the face smoothing into a pleasantness that had pain behind it.

“Did it hurt?” Loki asked.

“I think it hurt too much to feel. And I was so full of…” 

“Rage,” Loki offered.

“And fear,” Thor nodded. “Awe. Panic. In shock, I suppose.” Thor took another sip of his drink and then leaned back in his chair, letting the wood hold him up so that his spine could rest. “It hurt afterward, but not as much as I thought it would. Or not the way I thought it would. Just a throb with every beat of my heart, and the whole thing feeling like it might burst open again with just that pressure.”

“Have you gained anything? Been granted visions the way Father was after he lost his eye?”

“Gained? I don’t know. Kept, maybe. I fought the goddess of death and all it cost me was an eye. That’s a bargain by anyone’s reckoning. Anyway, this was different. Father cut his eye out himself to get those visions. It was a sacrifice.”

“ _ What _ ?” Loki gasped.

“He needed to see how to defeat the frost giants so he made a trade with the Norns. He never mentioned that to you?”

“Must have slipped his mind,” Loki griped.

“How convenient for him,” Thor said, and caught the flash of pleasure and gratitude that briefly cracked Loki’s mask. “But no, no visions on my end. Not without the ring, anyway. I look to my right and see the left side of my nose. Never noticed it before. It’s enormous. I have to crane my neck to see anything to my right.”

“Well, you’ve got no shortage of neck. I think you’ll manage.” 

Thor smiled at this and looked across to where Loki’s gaze was fixed on his empty socket.

“Father said even with both eyes I only saw half the picture.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes.”

“Then you were granted second sight.”

“No. I saw him before I lost the eye too, when I was in the arena, and then after I lost it when I was fighting Hela. Maybe it was only a hallucination. In each case I’d been beaten nearly senseless by the time he appeared.”

“No, it was a vision. A visitation.”

“Regardless, he was right,” Thor said, tipping his head and holding Loki’s gaze. “You saw the other half of everything.”

Loki drained his glass, hiding his face behind the crystal, letting its deep lense warp his features.

“I’ve always been in pieces,” Thor went on. 

“We,” Loki amended.

“ _ We’ve _ always been in pieces,” Thor nodded.

“Perhaps that’s what’s kept us safe all these centuries,” Loki offered. “Or kept us breathing at least. They can’t break what’s already broken.”

“Perhaps,” Thor agreed, smiling. He tapped his bare feet against the tops of Loki’s boots beneath the table. His toes hit leather twice and then fell three inches through empty air and came to rest on the wooden floor. The illusion in front of him was looking across the room at the bed, where the blankets were shifting as if two bodies were writhing together beneath them.

 

Thor finished his drink and got up to pull back the sheets. 

 

He was greeted by eighteen feet of snake. Glossy black that shone iridescent gold wherever the light fell sideways across its scales. When Thor reached out to touch it, his hand did not sail through it onto the mattress, but curved around the cool body to cup the shifting muscles and ribs, all busy breathing and coiling beneath the skin.

“Undress,” Loki’s double said, sitting weightlessly at the foot of the bed in full armor but for the helmet. Thor pulled his tunic over his head, then unlaced his leggings and kicked them to the floor. “Lie down.”

“I’m not too heavy for you?” Thor asked. “Snakes’ bones are so thin.”

“I’ll be fine,” Loki soothed. 

Still, Thor was cautious, resting against the bed wherever he could manage in order to spare Loki’s new body from his weight. But Loki was stronger than he looked. He wound his way around Thor slowly but steadily, binding Thor’s arms to his sides and then lifting him up off the bed. Thor stroked Loki wherever his fingers could reach, feeling the edges of thousands of scales stuttering against his fingertips. He bent his head to press his cheek to Loki’s cool, dry skin and set kisses on his spine.

“Your beard tickles,” the double told him, and Loki flicked his forked tongue over Thor’s eyebrows and under his nose to return the favor. Thor squirmed and scrunched his face up, then sneezed and started giggling.

 

There was a wheeze as Loki squeezed all the air from Thor’s lungs, and then Thor was motionless, looking into Loki’s round eyes with their thin, feline pupils as he waited to be allowed to breathe again.

“You could use the ring to get out of this,” the double noted, but Thor did nothing. 

Loki still didn’t ease off. He watched Thor’s face grow red and darken. Saw tears leak from his eye while his mouth hung open, desperate for air, dripping saliva down onto the sheets.

 

When Thor jerked, Loki loosened his grip on his brother just long enough to let him fill his lungs to the brim with one deep draught of air. And then Loki flexed again and there was another quiet rasp as all the air left Thor’s breast. 

 

Thor knew not to exert himself when he was deprived of oxygen. Knew that he had to conserve it for his heart and brain. His body was limp apart from his neck, which was extended to keep his airway open, and his cock, which was flexing against Loki’s ribs, smearing them with shiny drops of liquid that were pleasantly warm to Loki’s newly cold-blooded skin. 

 

While Thor was busy thinking about breathing, Loki drew back his tail and dealt a sharp, stinging lash to Thor’s ass. He loosened his grip enough that Thor could inhale at the shock of it, then crushed the air out of him again and peered over Thor’s shoulder to assess his work. A bright pink line ran across Thor’s right buttock, slowly deepening to crimson as Loki looked on. He lined up his tail and gave Thor a hundred strokes, working his way down the right side of the body and then back up the left, covering Thor’s thighs and backside with long, red welts as more tears leaked out Thor’s eye and fell onto Loki’s neck. 

“Tell me now,” the double said, as Loki relaxed his grip, “before you’re too far gone, what you’ll need after.”

“Warm bath,” Thor wheezed, panting and blinking tears from his eye. “Clean bedding. Cool water to drink first and then hot wine before I turn in. Sleep--a lot of it. It’s usually a week before I’m myself again… if you could stay with me that long... or, if not a week, then at least tonight, to help me…” Thor closed his eye and took a shaky breath. “ _ Hold _ me,” he went on, and Loki wondered if he was amending  _ help _ to  _ hold _ because he’d been afraid to say it, or if he meant both, or if he was clarifying that  _ help _ , in this case, would amount to holding him. “Apples. Probably ointment and bandages, but you’ll be able to see those things.”

“You have to tell me the things I won’t be able to see.”

“Sex… mostly kisses, really. I don’t care if I come. Read to me. Or sing. Only if you’re up for it. Don’t strain your voice or anyth-”

“Thor.”

“Sing, please. I’d say play with my hair, but I hardly have any now. Words. Soft ones. And keep the fire going in the stove. I love the flickering light and the crackle and the scent of the smoke.”

“Nothing else?”

“Can’t think of anything right now.”

“Promise you’ll tell me if anything comes to mind.”

“Promise,” Thor nodded, and Loki crushed him again and resumed the whippings, cross-hatching the welts he’d already set down. 

 

As the lashings went on, Loki loosened his grip so that he could hear his brother’s quiet cries. Raw, wet sounds from someone too spent to scream. Wordless gasps and sobs. Thor’s head was hanging now. He was breathing less desperately, but weakly and without rhythm.

 

When there wasn’t an inch of Thor’s behind left for Loki to redden, he brought his jaw to Thor’s throat and stretched it wide, then closed it around the left side of Thor’s neck. He bit down hard, piercing Thor with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth, then pulled back slightly to tear all the punctures open and set them bleeding. Loki felt Thor shudder against him. Warmth dotted his back as Thor sprayed semen onto his scales, sobbing in his ear with every jerk of his hips. Loki flicked his tongue through the the blood that flowed from Thor’s throat, lapping it up so it wouldn’t go to waste on the linens. He swirled the tip of his tail through the seed Thor had spilled and then worked it into Thor’s ass until its own girth stopped it. 

 

Thor went rigid with the shock of it. He squeezed his eye shut tight and opened his mouth in a silent scream. Loki fucked him so fast he never had a chance to fully master his body. It reacted with instinct, flexing where it needed reinforcement, hanging limp where no good could be done. The speed of Loki’s tail felt more like sound than touch. Like the ringing of a bell. Thor could hardly tell what was happening below his navel, only that everything was humming.

 

When Thor was so tired his body could no longer obey the instinct to flinch and flex against the tail that was darting into him, Loki stopped fucking his brother and wrapped the remainder of his long body low around Thor’s belly, then paused to let his brother catch his breath. Once Thor’s eye was clear and he could hold his head up again, Loki squeezed. Thor’s abdominals held their ground for nearly ten minutes, then steadily surrendered inch after inch until Thor’s waist was cinched in the knot of Loki’s long back and Thor’s bladder was emptying all over the scales of Loki’s belly, soaking them with heat as Thor groaned in relief.

“That felt better than anything, ever,” Thor said, breathless and grinning. 

Loki resumed his former shape and they dropped to the bed where Thor sprawled boneless on his brother’s pale chest. They were damp with sweat everywhere they’d been pressed together, and drenched in piss everywhere else.

“Yes it did,” Loki panted.

Thor smiled and kissed him and Loki closed his eyes and kissed his brother back twice before he remembered himself.

“Up,” Loki ordered, and Thor rose on shaking limbs, lifting himself slowly, staring down at Loki’s skin. It was a sight he’d had so little of in the last decade he could count the occasions on one hand. He reached to run a finger down the center of Loki’s breast but Loki caught him by the wrist and stopped his hand.

“On your belly,” Loki ordered, and Thor’s face twisted. He wasn’t ready to stop looking. “Turn your head to your right. No peeking.”

Thor was slow to comply. Not exhaustion now but reluctance. 

“Do it now, brother, or I’ll put my armor on again.”

Thor shut his eye and dropped to the bed, face down in the wet spots he’d made. Loki knocked his brother’s legs apart, bent low to spit on his hole, and pressed in with a slow thrust of his hips that made Thor hum. Thor had caught his breath and regained some of his strength, but he still wasn’t flinching. Loki knew it meant his brother’s whole body felt like it was burning. It had flooded with the warmth that pain left in its wake. Pleasure would bloom from each injury now. Thor could no longer be trusted to know what was too much. 

“Can’t stay the week,” Loki said, moving his hips cautiously, fucking Thor with slow, shallow swings, feeling Thor grow tense at the words. “Or the night. Not so much   _ can’t _ as  _ won’t _ . Just wanted to watch you fall for it again. Didn’t see it coming, did you? Not even with the ring. You believed I changed because you wanted me to be different. To be something other than myself. Because that’s who you love. Your fiction. But I’m not the fool you’ve dreamt up for a brother, Thor, I’m me. I’ve got what I want now--or will have in another minute--and I’m going. That’s what everyone with sense does, damn you. But you never see it. You never learn. You never  _ change _ .”

 

Loki knew he’d move his hips harder than he wanted to when he came. He pulled out of Thor and stroked himself until he finished, spurting milky ropes of seed onto the grid of red streaks that covered Thor’s ass. 

 

The imprint of Loki’s scales was deep where he’d been coiled around Thor’s body. A diamond pattern, like a fishing net. It would be tender at the edges. Loki ran his fingertips up and down Thor’s back lightly, feeling the raised bits of skin catching under his nails and hearing a happy moan low in Thor’s throat. The marks were angry, but not open. The only wounds Loki would have to dress were from the bite to Thor’s throat.

“Shall I draw a bath, or do you need to rest a moment?” Loki asked. 

“Need a minute,” Thor said, and Loki dropped down onto the bed beside him. “May I move now?” 

“Yes,” Loki said softly, with his lips near the back of Thor’s neck.

Thor rolled onto his right side and smiled. The bedclothes that had been beneath his throat were soaked with blood and tears. 

“Thought of something,” Thor said, reaching to push a stray curl back from his brother’s face and then rubbing the back of Loki’s bare arm. Loki nodded, inviting the answer. “No clothes--for either of us--when we’re in this room. I’m sick of looking at suits and armor--at  _ things _ . I want to look at  _ you _ . And…”

“ _ Thor _ ,” Loki urged, when more words were not forthcoming.

“And don’t lie to me. If there are things you don’t want me to know, you don’t have to tell me, but no lies. No tricks. Not until my head’s back on straight.” 

Loki nodded and kissed the tip of Thor’s nose.

 

“I’m going to set out everything we’ll need,” Loki said, giving a parting kiss to Thor’s shoulder as he rose from the bed. “Then I’ll draw your bath and fix the bed.”

“Where are you going?” Thor asked, when he saw Loki making a portal.

“I’m not going anywhere, I’m bringing something here,” Loki replied, reaching through the glowing doorway and opening a drawer that sat on the other side of it.

Thor peered at the elaborate bottle in his brother’s hand. The scents of herbs and old wood drifted into the room.

“I thought we agreed we’d only steal from Stark,” Thor said. He didn’t sound angry. Merely conversational.

“Well, Stark doesn’t actually have everything, and we don't have any money, so I’m stealing from Strange.”

“ _ Oh _ , good,” Thor said, smiling and sinking back against the pillows. “Yes, he’s fair game. Add him to the list.”

Loki grinned, grabbed a few more things, set them by the edge of the tub, and turned on the water. 

“Wait until I’ve got you, I don’t need you falling down and cracking your skull,” Loki scolded, frowning when he saw Thor sitting up and moving to rise from the bed.

“What’s one more head injury?” Thor smiled.

“You’re Norn-baiting again.”

“That sounds so much dirtier than it is.”

Loki rolled his eyes and ducked his chin to hide his smile behind a curtain of hair. With Thor’s arm around his shoulders and his arm around Thor’s waist, they slowly made their way to the bath.

“It’s taking every ounce of my willpower to resist the urge to call ‘Get help!’ and chuck you into that tub,” Loki said, and Thor squeezed him and kissed him on the cheek.

“No, it has to be you. You’re more aerodynamic,” Thor said.

“You’re a higher caliber. You’d do more damage when you hit.”

“Only if I got far enough to connect.”

“You don’t think I can throw you as far as you can me?”

“Correct,” Thor nodded.

“We’ll just see about that,” Loki said, as his face crumpled up with the smile he was trying to suppress.

They groaned as they sank into warm water. Thor watched Loki set the bed to rights with a few spells. Stains grew faint until they vanished completely. Pillows shuffled out of the way. The sheets snapped and straightened in the air, then floated down into smooth layers.

“More blankets?” Loki asked.

“Only if they’re obscenely fluffy.”

Loki nodded, though whether in acquiescence or agreement, Thor wasn’t certain. A portal opened into a room in Stark’s tower and then a stack of down comforters drifted onto the bed.

“Perfect, thank you,” Thor sighed.

“My pleasure,” Loki said of the theft, with his voice soft and dreamy to make Thor laugh again. It worked, yielding low hum and puff of air through Thor’s nose. “Are you all right sitting like this? I know I did a number on your backside.”

“The water’s holding me up a bit, and the tub is smooth.”

“I’m going to wash your hair, and then I’ll do your neck while you’re still buzzing. If we wait too much longer, it’ll sting like hornets when I dress it.”

Thor nodded and slid lower in the tub while Loki knelt astride his lap and slowly lathered his hair, working his fingers through the short strands, kneading the muscles at Thor’s nape and scrubbing behind his ears. 

“What are you smiling about?” Loki murmured, staring down at the teeth that were peeking out between his brother’s lips.

“This. The sizzle of the bubbles. The rose scent of the soap. Your fingers steering my head this way and that. Reminds me of Mother washing my hair when I was small.” 

Loki hummed and nodded. 

“She used to make the suds into a beard for me when I asked,” Thor remembered. “Dabbing them onto my chin and over my lip. Holding up a hand mirror to let me look at myself.”

“She made a crown for me when I asked, but of course it wilted as all the bubbles burst. So she wrenched a tiara into a tighter curve and gave me that. Bloody thing must have been worth half the GDP of Norway.”

Thor was bucking with laughter, sloshing water over the edge of the bath and making a sound that would be easy to mistake for weeping. When he’d caught his breath, he cleared his throat.

“There used to be pearls in Brisingamen, but I ate them all when I was three-” 

“ _ Thor! _ ” Loki gasped, then laughed so hard the flexing of his belly drove all the air from his lungs and he wheezed. He fell forward, shaking and rolling his forehead against his brother’s.

“They were so beautiful I was certain they’d be sweet,” Thor continued. “I kept looking for one that was ripe.”

“You whelp,” Loki chided, though the scold was somewhat spoiled by his giggling. “What did they taste like?” 

“Nearly nothing,” Thor smiled. “That’s why we use nacre spoons for caviar.”

 

Loki rinsed Thor’s hair with a pitcher and moved onto rinsing Thor’s neck, letting the water wash the sticky blood away, sparing Thor’s broken skin the drag of fingers. The sharp scent of copper reached their noses and made their hearts beat faster. Some animal core at the base of the brain, oblivious to the specifics of their circumstances, scented blood and thought only of danger; sought only self-preservation. But they’d never been safer.

“Is there anyone out there who’d understand this?” Loki asked, setting the pitcher aside and sinking against Thor’s lap. “Understand _ us _ ?”

“Only Heimdall,” Thor said, wincing apologetically beneath his smile. “Beyond him, no. No one loves anyone as much as I love you.” 

Thor said it with a careless toss of his shoulder, a tip of his head, and a slow blink of his eye. A dismissal, not of his words but of all the fools who had failed to match him.

“You’ll have to settle for a tie,” Loki said. His face was smooth but his nostrils flared once and Thor felt his brother’s thighs twitch where they rested against his own. “Tell me you know that much.”

“I know,” Thor smiled, winking and watching the tension seep from of Loki’s shoulders. “You wouldn’t kick so hard if you weren’t bound so tightly.”

“Are you sure it isn’t too tight? Too much?” Loki’s voice started crisp but faded to little more than a whisper by the end of his question.

“Too much of what for whom?” Thor asked. His face wore an easy smile, confident and settled, almost resting. His gaze was soft. The muscles around his eye were relaxed.

“Of anything for anyone,” Loki answered, then dropped his eyes to the holes in Thor’s throat. “Of me for you… and you for me.”

“I can only answer one side of that,” Thor murmured, narrowing his eye as his gaze roved over Loki’s face. Loki’s mouth was gaping slightly, his lips open like a sleeping child’s. It looked as if he was waiting to catch Thor’s words and swallow them. Hoping for honey, but every bit as willing to drink poison if that was what Thor was pouring. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I drew a line anywhere between us,” Thor said. “Especially one that was only meant to keep other people comfortable. I can’t do this by halves. I don’t love you up to a point, Loki. I love you. Period. There’s no asterisk.” 

Loki was still staring. Thor gave him a smile and a pat on the hips and Loki surfaced from his thoughts and let his head sink until his mouth was sealed over his brother’s and Thor was gently sucking his tongue.

“Mmm. Your neck,” Loki remembered, sitting up and drying his hands.

Thor rolled his head to his right and Loki used an eyedropper to place a bead of antiseptic over each of the holes in Thor’s throat. While those were soaking in, he soaped the rest of Thor’s skin and rinsed it.

“Wait here,” he said, then climbed out and hastily dried himself off on his way to the stove. 

 

The hiss of fresh logs going onto the fire made the brothers feel warm and drowsy. It had so often been the last thing they heard before they drifted off to sleep during hunts as young men. When the room had warmed, Loki held a bath towel open wide and Thor stepped into it. Loki cautiously patted his brother dry, but didn’t scrub, not wanting to damage skin that was so close to broken.

 

While Thor sipped cool water, Loki looked him over. The diamond pattern left by his scales had faded in the bath, leaving Thor’s arms and upper body unmarked. The welts on his ass and the backs of his legs were still puffy and red, and a few had bruised where they crossed over Thor’s bones.

“Lie down on your side for now,” Loki said, and Thor curled up on the bed while Loki fetched a few cloths and a jar of something white and solid. “Is this a scent you won’t mind smelling for a day or two?” Loki asked, opening the crock and offering it to Thor for a sniff.

“Coconut oil,” Thor read, peering at the label, then swiped his finger through the white cream and popped a dollop of it into his mouth. 

“Can we fry toast in this?” Thor asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Loki said. “Does that mean you approve?” 

Thor nodded. 

 

Loki laid a blanket over Thor’s legs, then took a generous swipe of oil and rubbed it between his palms until it melted. 

 

He decided to start with the forearms and elbows. It was skin that took a beating daily, and, in Thor’s case, was most often uncovered. Not a terribly exciting place to be touched. The most sensitive parts were the undersides of the wrists and the insides of the elbows. Loki brushed oil over these with just the pads of his fingers, letting them linger to feel Thor’s pulse running strong and even in the veins below. Next came the biceps, all pleasing curves and excess. Sturdy enough to knead and rub with satisfying pressure. Loki followed these up to the shoulders, loving the glide of their taut skin and rounded bone beneath his palms. He could feel the tension leaving Thor’s body with each pass of his hands. Thor’s breathing had slowed to something sleepy, with deep pulls and short puffs that Loki could hear as they passed through Thor’s nose. He did Thor’s hands next, waking his brother up a bit with all the movement that such complicated shapes necessitated. Not that all the movements were necessary from a moisturizing standpoint. Loki dovetailed their fingers and pumped Thor’s hands. Brought every knuckle and fingertip to his lips for kisses. Dragged his nails over Thor’s palms as light as feathers, tickling Thor so that he shivered and his nipples went tight. 

 

Loki did all the muscles in Thor’s breast and belly with long, smooth drags of his hands that put Thor to sleep. Loki had to bite his lips to keep from laughing. It was like magic. And unchanged from childhood. If you wanted to calm Thor down or put him to bed, you rubbed his stomach and the job was done in under two minutes. If you wanted him wide awake, you rubbed his thighs. Loki pulled back the blankets and worked his way up to those from Thor’s ankles. When he got to the tops, Thor was spreading his legs, inviting Loki’s fingers to the soft skin on the insides of his thighs, with its dusting of blond fur and its irresistible warmth. Thor shut his legs around Loki’s hand. Loki left it there, gently squeezing but not trying to escape. They watched each other watching and traded tired smiles.

“On your belly,” Loki said, urging Thor onto his front by curling his fingers around the inviting dip of Thor’s waist.

Thor tipped over and Loki crouched above him, keeping his legs wide and his seat high to avoid any pressure on Thor’s injuries while he kneaded Thor’s neck and back. Another easy way to put Thor to sleep. Loki heard a soft  _ pffff _ sound every time his brother exhaled.

 

Thor roused a little when Loki nudged his legs apart and knelt between them. He woke fully when Loki tickled the backs of his knees. Loki watched the reflexive flinch run through Thor’s muscles, making everything jerk and setting it jiggling.  

 

Rubbing the oil in would mean more friction than Loki wanted to risk for the slashes that criss-crossed Thor’s thighs and backside. Instead, Loki coated his palms in a thick layer of cream and gently pressed it onto every inch of wounded skin, letting the heat of his palms melt it into Thor’s flesh.

 

When Loki tapped the backs of his fingers against the insides of Thor’s legs, Thor obediently spread them wider. The cleft in Thor’s ass was free of welts, but his hole looked pinker and puffier than usual. Loki leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to the puckered skin.

“Sore?” he asked.

“Warm,” Thor replied.

“That means you  _ will _ be sore.”

Thor hummed, agreeing but unbothered. 

 

Loki kissed him again, then licked his way from Thor’s balls to the base of his back, feeling the skin go from loose and pebbled, to tight and wrinkled, to smooth and firm. Thor made a quiet sound and spread his legs further. Loki smiled and licked him again, feeling Thor’s hole flex at the tickle of his tongue, tracing circles around it to tease it and soothe it. Thor hummed again. His smile was audible. Loki kept licking and kissing Thor’s hole until he feared the friction might begin to do more harm than good, then he carefully dried Thor’s skin with a cloth and painted oil over his opening with the pad of his thumb.

 

Loki climbed over to stretch out beside his brother and Thor tipped over and curled forward until they were nose to nose. His eye was bright and his cheeks were flushed and round with his smiling.

“Wine?” Loki asked, and went to fetch it when Thor said yes.

 

When they’d had a few drinks Thor wanted songs. He settled under Loki’s left arm with his head on Loki’s breast so that he’d be able to hear the words both in the air as they left Loki’s lips and in Loki’s body as they buzzed through his throat.

 

“I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten that one,” Thor murmured, after Loki sang a lullaby their grandmother had once sung to them. “We should write these down. Record them. I wish I’d had more time. So much is gone. All the animals and plants. The books. The instruments. Things of Mother’s I meant to save.”

Thor felt his brother sob once beneath his cheek and heard a stuttering breath.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Loki choked. “I didn’t know about her--about Hela. If I’d-”

“He’d have kept that secret until his last breath no matter what we’d done,” Thor said firmly, shaking his head, rolling his cheek against the warmth of Loki’s chest. “He spared himself all but a minute of exposure and distracted us with grief while he did it. Left us to destroy the realm. I left our people with nothing but the clothes on their backs.” 

“You had to-- _ we _ had to. You don’t let a gangrenous toe poison the rest of the body. You cut it off.” 

 

They rested a while, sifting through their memories, picking them up and following the threads that lay under each of them, then setting them all down again and surfacing. They settled face to face, bundled in blankets, breathing softly while Loki combed Thor’s hair with his fingers. 

“I was angry about this haircut at first,” Loki confessed.

“So was I. My hair reminded me of Mother’s.”

“Exactly,” Loki nodded. “But I think you might finally look like yourself now. Your bones show. Your features aren’t obscured. You were never one to hide. And it gives your face more height. Makes you look slim and boyish. Especially since it’s always mussed.” Thor ducked his head and blushed at this. Loki grinned. “You've never been lovelier.”

“My eye,” Thor breathed.

“You look different, but no less beautiful. The absence of sun doesn’t make the night ugly, Thor, it lets you see the stars.” Thor tucked his chin to his chest and Loki buried his nose in messy tufts of blond. “What I miss most is the way it really opened. It was a means of getting into you, and a way for you to get out. You’ve never been much for words, brother, but your eyes always said so much. There’s only one speaker of that language left now.”

“An endling,” Thor nodded, then took Loki's palm and set it to his forehead.

Loki saw himself over the span of a thousand years. Laughing, crying, fighting, sleeping, giving and receiving kisses and embraces. All from angles he'd never seen, and all suffused with a warmth he recognized from his own memories of his brother. One of the most recent memories was a view from the palace terrace of Loki arriving at the Bifrost with the Grandmaster’s ship. It had been so joyous Loki’s cheeks were burning with it.

“When you came down from the palace with a storm in you and tore through Hela’s soldiers,” Loki began quietly.

“Yes,” Thor said.

“I could have sworn I saw light coming from both of your eyes.”

“I could see through both of them. Though it wasn’t entirely like seeing through my right. More like… I don’t know…  _ sensing _ . Sonar, or radar, or X-rays. No color, but all the surfaces. Maybe there’s still some nerve left in the socket for the current to travel through.”

“Could you see yourself?”

“Yes, everything the lightning touched.”

Loki hummed and licked the knotted skin in Thor’s right socket.

Thor squealed and squirmed, wiggling his shoulders up and down as he giggled, then cleared his throat.

“That tickled.”

“Yes. Good.”

 

They were hungry when they woke the next morning. Thor saw Loki open a portal and heard the muffled suck of a refrigerator door opening. Then Loki swore and cast a glamour of clothing over himself. He grabbed the portal by its edges and hastily turned it so that it faced away from the bed.

“You could try a grocery store,” Strange said.

“No money,” Loki lamented, smiling nonetheless.

“You could try earning some.”

“I have a job, but it doesn’t pay.”

“What’s that?”

“Stealing.”

Strange rolled his eyes

“It’s eaten up years of my life,” Loki defended. “And not a coin to show for it. Stole the gems--half of them repeatedly. Stole the Casket of Ancient Winters-- _ twice _ -”

“Loki!” Thor yelled.

“Why waste it?” Loki called. “Stole the throne. Stole some codes. Stole some ships. Stole Asgard from Hela. Stole some medicine. Stole-”

“Why did you need medicine?” Strange cut in.

“Health?” Loki tried.

“Whose health? Oh, goddammit, where’s Thor?”

“You just heard him.”

“Let me see him.”

Loki summoned an illusion of his brother. Strange threw a banana through it.

“Fine,” Loki sighed. “Thor, please give the doctor proof of life.”

Thor wrapped a sheet around himself and came over to wave hello.

“What the hell happened to your neck?” Strange asked, darting his eyes over at Loki as he spoke.

“Snake,” Thor answered, after a beat.

“Really. What kind?”

“Big one.”

“In Norway,” Strange said flatly.

“They just find me,” Thor shrugged, turning on his heel and heading back to bed. “I’m like the anti St. Patrick.”

“Why does he know about St. Patrick?”

“He likes drinking holidays,” Loki explained.

“’Course he does. And why are you stealing from  _ my _ refrigerator. There’s nothing special in it.”

“Well, normally I’d steal from Stark, but he only eats green mush that tastes like a heifer’s cud. And you always have Rocky Road. So.”

Strange stared. Loki held his gaze. When Strange did nothing, Loki slowly resumed his thieving, maintaining eye contact all the while, pulling ice cream from the freezer, apples from the crisper, and a whole carton of eggs from the door. He paused a moment. Strange still didn’t move. Loki took a pound of butter and a loaf of bread.

“You know what? Have at it,” Strange said, throwing up his hands. “Help yourself, any time. I’m leaving.” 

“Excellent idea. I was just going to suggest it.”

 

“We should eat all the ice cream first so it doesn’t melt,” Thor said, when Loki had finished his raid and closed the portal.

“I can keep it cold with a spell,” Loki reminded. Thor glared at him. “ _ Or _ we can eat it all right now,” Loki offered. Thor nodded and handed him a spoon.

 

After seven days spent wallowing in his brother’s affections, Thor woke to an empty room. Light rain began to fall. Feeling deservedly guilty for the wet gloom, Thor went outside to let it drum his skin while he stretched his legs. 

 

At the edge of the cliff, he found his brother sitting cross-legged, cutting his hair with a knife and tossing the locks into the grass for the birds. What remained on his head had gone wild with the wind and rain. The length Loki had shorn off no longer weighed the strands down. The edges of the curls framed his face now, softening his brow and pointing to his eyes, swirling in every direction without rhyme or reason, shifting with every gust, never settling in the same place twice.

“It suits you,” Thor said, ruffling the damp ringlets with his fingers as he sat down to watch the sea.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost.


End file.
